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NDR / Devices and media / Photographs and camera cards

Bench work · cards, sticks and photo drives

Nottingham photo recovery. A free tool calls the preview a photograph. The whole RAW off the card is the job.

The cost for USB sticks and camera cards begins at £250 + VAT, put in writing after a free look, and most jobs are completed in two or three working days. However, the first step is to stop using the card. A simple delete just removes the index entry. A format performed by the camera simply places a new empty index over the previous one. And often, when we receive a card that the camera says it cannot open, it turns out to be perfectly healthy on our bench. In each case, the frames remain intact until something new is written on top. What follows covers what a free software download really offers, why a 50MB RAW image arrives home at around 5MB, and how frames are rebuilt complete. We take memory cards, USB sticks, external drives and hard drives removed from computers, for Nottingham, Beeston, Chesterfield and Newark-on-Trent. No phones.

Only pay if we recover your data, on most jobs Free diagnosis first, then a single price, in writing Parcels come in from Derby, Lincoln and Loughborough

Ask an engineer and the first look is free
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What the camera card's symptom points to.

Not yours? Open the fault finder →
What is happeningWhat usually causes itWhat that means for you
A folder deleted by mistakeOnly the index entry goes. The picture remains where it was, readable, until new data is written over itPull the card and leave it alone
The camera ran a formatAn empty index goes over the old one. What is below it will often be wholeStrong odds if you stopped shooting
'Memory card error', with an offer to reformatA corrupted index. Pictures beneath it are generally untouchedRefuse that offer, every time it appears
Files came back and not one of them opensThese are screen previews, or the start of each frameThe complete frames are almost certainly still on it
Colour banding through a RAW, or grey at the very bottom of itEither the frame was recorded in multiple segments (runs), or some portion of the frame has been overwrittenRebuilt to the manufacturer's layout
A video clip that will not openA 4K clip breaks into pieces across a memory card much more often than any still photoJoined back on true frame boundaries
How to pack and post it: get a quote first. Movement kills a damaged drive, so you need to pack it rigidly. Insure the package for what the files are worth, not how much the disk cost. Then put a tracked label on the package for the intake lab. We pay for the return postage. If you like, ring before sealing your package so that we can check your packing is adequate. The whole process is outlined in our packing and postage guide.

A file count is not a photograph.

Size alone tells youEach NEF, CR3 and ARW contains an embedded JPEG for preview purposes, which gives the camera's screen something to show. An ordinary utility extracts that JPEG, marks the RAW as recovered, then moves on to the next file. This explains why a 50MB RAW frame comes back at around 5MB.
Large files seldom sit in one runA continuous block of free space long enough for a large file is relatively rare on a memory card. When a basic carver reaches the first gap, it stops, costing you a corner of a JPEG and the whole of a RAW image or video clip. The order of these runs is recorded within the file format itself, and knowing how to read it is what makes the difference.
Each RAW format gives way in its own mannerTIFF is the underlying format used for CR2 files, which is why CR2 files tend to survive damage better than many other formats. CR3 files use a newer container built on other principles. Damage to NEF files generally appears as bands of green and purple across the image. ORF, RAF, RW2, ARW and DNG each need handling on their own terms, and no single off-the-shelf utility covers them all.
What a deletion really removesDeleting a file on FAT or exFAT releases the cluster chain the file used, while a format releases all of them at once. Your card is never wiped, which is why recovery works so well, and also why your very next shot may be written straight over an image you want.

From the parcel arriving to the files going home.

01

Booked in the day it arrives, and the first look is on us Free

Your case number is assigned when the item is received. Then an engineer works out what went wrong (no charge). At this point, you receive a basic summary of which parts are recoverable and which are not. You also receive a single written quote for the price of the recovery. Accept the quoted price or turn it down, and there is no obligation to pay anything.

The first look is freeOne fixed figure, in writingNo charge at this point
02

The card is never written to

Each sector of your card is copied before anything else is done with it, and every action after that is performed on the copy. The original is returned to you exactly as it arrived.

A sector-by-sector clone comes firstYour card comes back untouched
03

Mend the file table, or else carve the frames out

Mending the file table brings everything back to how you had it: the file names, the folder structure and the date the camera put on each one. Where the table cannot be mended, carving comes into play. Each format is read against the specification its maker published, and an entire RAW frame is rebuilt from however many runs it was spread across. A preview is not a result.

Names and folder tree preservedWhole RAW frames, not previews
04

Every frame looked at by eye

No job leaves the lab until each frame that was recovered has been displayed at 100% for someone to review. The numbers in a report mean nothing. The full-size images are what provide proof.

Checked by eye, not countedFull-size frames, not thumbnails
05

The file list comes before the bill

A complete file list will be provided before any invoicing. Simply say "yes" or "no" to what we found: yes means it is billed, no means it is not, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. What we find is posted to you on media purchased specifically for your case, at no additional cost to you. We consider the process complete once you have opened those files yourself on your own computer.

Nothing is charged until you agree the figureNew media, bought in for your jobWe pay to send it home

What comes in most often

  • Three things are wrapped together in a RAW file: image data, metadata and a tiny JPEG that gives the camera a preview to show. An application can extract the JPEG, flag the RAW file as recovered, and walk straight past your photo.
  • CFexpress Type B has NVMe underneath: its shape and connector are the same as XQD, not CompactFlash, so it will fit in an XQD card reader, or in a camera's XQD slot whose firmware has never seen NVMe, and a perfectly healthy card will come back marked as faulty.
  • Reconstructing video is the most difficult carve: hundreds of fragments may make up one single 4K clip, and standard off-the-shelf applications reassemble them in whatever order they turn up. Everything relies on knowing where one frame ends and the next starts.
  • eMMC gives you no removable card: the internal memory of an item such as a dashcam, action camera or low-cost laptop is simply a soldered-on flash chip, so the chip cannot be removed. We therefore do not accept items with soldered storage, and you should ring us before sending anything where the type of storage has not been identified. Handsets and tablets will always fall outside our remit, whatever storage they use.

Whether we can recover your images depends on how you treat the card afterwards: remove the card immediately once you have noticed the problem and the potential for success is high. Shooting more images after that increases the likelihood of overwriting some of those you wish to recover. There is no cost for stopping, and no cost for us to look. Cards and sticks are priced at £250 + VAT; in each case we will quote the price in writing, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data.

One of these, from start to finish.

NG · NTG-2026-1977ON THE LOG ✓

A free tool returned thumbnails; the wedding album needed full frames

In this instance, the card had remained unused since the wedding (nothing written to it, no additional photos added), so the copy came off the card without issue. Someone had already run a free utility on it, creating approximately six hundred thumbnail images, but these were too small to be printed. As each fragmented CR3 file was rebuilt from its component parts, all 640 photographs were restored at full resolution.

640 frames returned at full size72 hours of work on it

What helps, and what does damage.

Worth doing first

  • Take the card out and keep it somewhere safe
  • Shoot on a spare card for now
  • Tell us which camera it came from, and how the card was formatted
  • Get a quote and send in the card, even if a program has already been run on it

What makes it harder

  • Reformatting to clear the error message
  • Slotting it back in the camera to try once more
  • Pointing a second tool at the card
  • Accepting 5MB previews as the job done

Answers before you spend anything.

Is a free recovery program worth running on RAW files?

Often, for small JPEGs from a card that was put straight onto a shelf (not for RAW files or video). Software tools like this count every object they encounter; when they find a preview within a frame, they add it to the overall number. This creates an impression of how well your search is progressing, while at the same time your folder becomes cluttered with offcuts. Make a clone of the card before any attempt at recovery. Work out how much space a single 'real' photograph should occupy. Compare that with the files generated by the software.

Everything I recovered refuses to open. Why?

Two main reasons account for almost all of it: either the software extracted the low resolution preview embedded within your RAW file but did not include the full frame, or it extracted just the first part of an image laid down across several runs, and stopped at that point. The good news in both instances is that the raw sensor data itself usually remains intact. As long as the area it occupied has not been written over since, the frame can be read again and reassembled using the documentation provided by its maker.

The camera formatted my card. Have the pictures gone?

Usually not. When a camera formats a memory card, it creates a new empty directory over the old one, while the images remain where they were originally stored. So if you put your memory card aside straight away, you have a very high chance of recovering those images. Every frame you shoot after that eats into it.

Can you pull photographs off a phone?

No. Our lab does not take handsets (including smartphones) or tablets. However, if you send one of the places where your photos were copied to (a memory card, an external hard disk, a laptop's internal drive, or the drive holding the folder of HEIC files that appears on a computer the first time a phone is plugged in), then we will be happy to help. Please get a quote from us before sending anything, then post it, so we can begin work once we receive it. Hold on to your smartphone; it is much better to learn about this now rather than after a parcel has gone.

Start here if the same thing is happening to yours.

When a card reads blank → What survives a deletion → A format run by mistake → The full device list →

Switched off, a drive cannot get any worse.

The look costs nothing. It gives you a file listing of what opened and what did not, along with the cost of finishing the job, in writing, before anything chargeable begins. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Do not switch the drive on until you have that listing.

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Get a quote, then send it Posting it to Manchester